


Hideaway

by aredburn



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Week Challenge, but i have reasons!, very late btw, yes i'm posting this too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-04 14:32:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10280987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aredburn/pseuds/aredburn
Summary: This is part of the Week Challenge on tumblr. Prompt as follows: Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus are supposed to go to a bar after a mission but Rufus cancels (reason to be chosen by the writer) and Lucy and Wyatt go alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is rushed and not proofed, but I'm tired and really want to get this out.

“You need a drink.”

His words sound slurred, as if she’s listening from underwater. It takes her brain a second longer to register what he actually says and by then he has already a hand on her shoulder, rubbing the spot in comfort.

She wants to cry again, as if his touch has weakened the fragile armor around her but she knows she probably doesn’t have any tears left anymore.  Everything had gone by in a blur: her mom’s words, traffic lights as she sped from her home, the buzz inside Mason Industries, agent Christopher’s concerned warnings upon knowing about the Mothership’s theft.  She barely remembered the minutes she had spent with Wyatt before her life fell apart, the words they shared, the hope she felt lifting her existence as if she had been breathed with life again.

So Lucy just nods, hoping that it will be enough answer. It isn’t.

“Lucy?”

She focuses on him, his blue eyes, the smirk that was there when they talked about possibilities, but isn’t anymore. She isn’t shaking anymore, but her throat is still closed up and her head is fighting the beginning of a stellar headache. “I think I need an alcoholic coma.”

“Ah, maybe just forgetting your name will have to do.”

She can’t help the corners of her lips from tugging up and she smiles.

“I gotta go check up on Jiya.” Rufus is apologetic, but he sounds worried, and Lucy can understand his fear. “But I’ll meet you guys later?”

Lucy doesn’t know if being alone with Wyatt while she’s so vulnerable is a good idea, but Wyatt nods and tells Rufus to make sure Jiya is okay and that they’ll wait for him so she doesn’t say anything.

The drive to the bar they usually go is silent, heavy with Lucy’s feelings sucking all of the air inside the car and almost suffocating her. She’s so angry that her knuckles are white where she’s grabbing the sides of her seat and her mouth hurts from the way her jaw is set, tense. She doesn’t know what to say beyond what has already been discussed, doesn’t know what to feel, how to externalize the turmoil inside her mind because she feels like she’s not even Lucy Preston anymore, but a character designed to fulfill somebody’s story.

“Hey, I know it’s hard, but you need to relax.”

She scoffs, stares outside her window at the scenery speeding by in a blur, shapes mixed in a twirl of color, fading at the corners of her eyes. Is that how she is now? Just a shapeless body dropped into somebody else’s life? “I just found out my entire life is a lie. So I think relaxing is out of the picture for a while.”

Wyatt stops at a red light and grabs Lucy’s hand, lacing their fingers together. She looks down at the shape of their hands entwined, his big palm enveloping hers, warmth radiating from where their skin touch and her anger dissipates a little while her chest fills with something else, something hot that spreads to the rest of her body.

“Not everything is a lie.”

Her eyes flicker to his and she isn’t sure what she’s reading in them but before she can process what is happening inside the small space in the car the light turns green and Wyatt lets go of her. She feels like she’s falling, falling, falling down into a void without his hand to keep her afloat.

They fall in silence again and she mulls over the possibilities of her life, what it all means for her now, tries to temper down her anger, disappointment, the fear of having everything she believed in taken from her.

When they arrive they go to their usual table, which is thankfully empty and that gives Lucy a small relief, a spark of normalcy at least tonight. She slides into the booth and to her surprise Wyatt slides in next to her and she realizes it makes sense without Rufus, but his proximity makes her nervous for some reason, as if she’s anxious about barriers being crossed.

“So,” Wyatt starts, checking out the menu, “the strongest the house has?”

Lucy smiles and she starts counting how many times Wyatt has elicited this reaction from her in the hours between her world falling apart and their growing intimacy and suddenly she isn’t nervous anymore, her anxiety giving away to expectation. “I remember you saying something about forgetting my name?”

The moment the words leave her mouth she sees the flicker of something cross his eyes, something that make his pupils widen just a little a bit, that make him look back down at the menu while his cheeks gain a little color. Her idea of forgetting her own name has too little to do with alcohol and too much to do with hormones and she wonders if he’s thinking the same.

“We’ll get there.”

They make their orders and Wyatt goes with beer and she chooses red wine; she has always been a little weak for wine, so she chooses it on purpose, hoping it will get her dizzy a little faster, make her loosen up enough to just pour out everything that is on her mind. If he won’t let her just crawl into a hole and cry herself to sleep for a few years, then he’ll have to deal with the consequences.

“So. Your life sucks, huh?”

He says it so unceremoniously that she chuckles in the middle of taking a sip and almost chokes on her wine. She expects this kind of thing from Rufus, who never really measures his words, but she can see Wyatt is trying _so hard_ to cheer her up she wants to cry instead. What did she ever do to deserve someone like him?

“It could be worse.”

Wyatt gives her his trademark half smirk and puts his beer down, reaches out a hand to rub her shoulder. “How are you feeling? _Really?_ ”

Lucy revels in his touch, chooses her words carefully then just spill out: “Like I want to die?” and this is the truest she’s been all day, probably for a long time too. She’s tired of pretending all of this isn’t affecting her the way it is, as if she’s strong enough to take all of it without crumbling, but she isn’t, and she _is_ crumbling.

“This… hollowness, this painful in between, it will be over, even if you don’t believe it will ever end, it will.” She gives him a doubtful look, because she can’t possibly see how she will ever heal, how this heaviness on her chest that almost makes her breathless in the most painful way will ever lift. “ _It will_. I promise.”

She wonders if he’s talking about Jessica, of how he felt the years following her death. He was still obsessed not too long ago, _five years_ from her disappearance. Is she going to be able to stand all of this for so long? “We can’t even fix this. It doesn’t matter if we go back and get my…. Mom and my dad together, she still Rittenhouse.” Lucy lowers her voice in the end, as if saying their name will somehow bring the plague upon them, make Benjamin Cahill appear requesting Lucy to fulfill her destiny, whatever her destiny is now. Then suddenly a realization clicks, as if a switch has just been flicked. “I can’t bring Amy into this.”

The tears she has managed to keep at bay until this moment threaten to spill out over the rim of her eyes. Her sister, the reason she’s been doing this all the time, the person she _loves the most_ can’t be brought back. What if she changes the timeline again and Rittenhouse decides _killing_ Amy is a fair way to push Lucy into their direction? A sister that disappeared because they screwed up the past is one thing, but a dead sister will be impossible to change. They saw it first hand when Wyatt tried to do it.

“I can’t bring my sister back.” Lucy’s voice falters, her words blending with the tears that finally come and she takes a deep breath before she chokes on her own fears.

Wyatt is right there next to her, sliding closer, enveloping her inside his arms. “Hey, hey.” She lets him comfort her because she needs someone to take control of things for a little while, needs someone to take care of her while she just gives in. “Amy isn’t dead, don’t forget that. It doesn’t matter how bad things may get, you’ll always have a chance to bring her back someday.”

She lays her head on his chest, hears his heart beat gently under his skin almost in sync with her own and it reminds her that she’s still alive and that’s a small victory. Wyatt’s hand on her hair and his arms around her almost lull her to sleep and she knows this would probably be the best sleep she’ll be getting for a while now.

When her tears finally stop falling, she pulls away from him a little embarrassed. They have been through a lot together, seen the lowest each other reached, but she still feels like breaking down over Rittenhouse is something that should be kept to herself.  

Wyatt doesn’t let her go fully, rubs his fingers on her cheeks to wipe away the trail the tears left down her face and their eyes find each other. She feels something suddenly blossom between them, as if the air around them is shifting to accommodate something heavier, stronger, something that chains them together tightly. She feels it pulling her to him, like a string tied around her heart straight to his; shortening with each breath they take.

She doesn’t know who leans in first, but she’s pretty sure they meet halfway, a press of lips that sparks something deep within her and crushes every negative feeling. She feels like he’s holding her head above water while her car is sinking down.

The slide of his lips is tentative, as if he’s making sure this is what she wants and giving her time to pull back before it’s too late, which she doesn’t. Instead she fists a handful of his shirt in her hand and allows herself to enjoy the way one of his hands pull her closer while the other press on the back of her neck.

He smells faintly of aftershave and summer breeze, refreshing and warm and the taste of beer on his tongue soon mix with the wine on hers and later she will admit to herself nobody has ever kissed her the way Wyatt does, with such want and desire and care and worry all wrapped up together, lingering when it matters, testing and learning every nook and crevice of her mouth.

She bits gently on his lower lip and he the sound he makes awakens something from her core and she smiles into their kiss at the way his hands press harder against her body. Soon they find themselves a tangle of arms and lips and the space around them seem to be too small, too crowded and Lucy just wants to go, anywhere they can be alone, where she can look into his eyes with dilated pupils black with desire and relieve the pressure building between her legs.

“Uh, if I knew this was a date I wouldn’t have come.”

Lucy pulls back in panic, her face the perfect description of a deer caught in headlights. “Rufus!” The interruption is on good time, she thinks when she realizes Wyatt’s hand is on her thigh, dangerously close to where it shouldn’t be in public. “It isn’t.”

“It wasn’t.”

The use of the past tense isn’t lost on Lucy.

“How long has this been going on?” Rufus slides into the booth in front of them and picks up the menu as if catching them kissing isn’t something entirely unexpected.

“Nothing’s going on.”

“Ten minutes.”

Lucy and Wyatt say at the same time and they exchange glances, she frowns and he shrugs. They should be on the same page, but either Wyatt’s still having an adrenaline rush from the kiss or Lucy’s reaction is slowed by it.

Rufus orders his drink and while he’s distracted chatting with the waitress, Wyatt grabs her hand in support, holding her fingers tight inside his, pulling gently to bring her attention to him. When she looks at him he’s smiling, that half smirk that makes her breath catch.

She opens her palm and lets his fingers slide through hers and knows that at least this part of her life will be okay.


End file.
